Martin Murtland, Vice President & Managing Director, Factivia Communicator, for Dow Jones discusses Occupy Wall Street’s implications for media and communications.
Some of Martin’s Key Takeaways:
“The thing I find interesting is just the shear wide range of topics that are being covered in association with the Occupy Wall Street movement; such as economic inequality and executive pay but also, more recently, things like police enforcement.”
“We found in traditional media, focus was more on the police crackdowns and on social media the discussion was around the actual protesters being pepper sprayed, particularly the University of California campus where they were protesting possible hikes in tuition fees. If you compare them in totality, I think they’re both covering the same sort of issues and following a similar trend pattern in terms of the volume and the favorability.”
Doug Simon, President and CEO of D S Simon Productions, sat down with Jeff Karzen, Lead Communications Executive of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, in studio during a D S Simon Satellite Media Tour for the AACS. Jeff explains a new procedure involving adult stem cells and how he uses PR to quell the stem cell stigma.
“If you’re a card carrying member of the Public Relations Society of America and are only interested in my predictions in this space, here they are: I think we’re going to continue to see the transition of senior executives from the advertising world to Public Relations because that’s where authentic communications is happening. You can’t just buy your way on and reach consumers anymore. It’s become much more of an opt-in culture. We’re also going to see agencies grow but I think a big change is corporate communicators are going to look to hire specific organizations on a project basis and most of this is going to relate to not only content creation but also distribution, especially to social media. In the broadcast PR space I think we’re going to see the increased popularity of Internet Media Tours, Viral Video media placement and Internet Interview Tours to reach key audiences that in some cases are self-selected because the blogs and website that would take the content would only be interested in your story if they know their readers and viewers are. Two predictions specific to D S Simon Productions, I think we’re going to see continued growth as we celebrate our 25th anniversary year and we’ll be moving to a larger office space. Hope your wishes and predictions come true for 2011.”
Doug Simon, President and CEO of D S Simon Productions, met with Tim Towster, Vice President of Marketing for BlueAnt, at Barbounia Restaurant in NYC to discuss the launch of the S4, a car speaker phone, and the Q2, a wireless Bluetooth headset. BlueAnt chose not to seek out traditional advertising avenues and instead is launching two viral videos showcasing the products in action. The highly anticipated second video will be launched and available to the media in coming weeks. See the first video here.
Some of Tim’s VlogViews:
“What makes our approach really unique is we’re not doing traditional advertising. So in a sense we’re not going to be doing radio, television, and print. We’re actually going and utilizing PR, grassroots, and viral videos and doing a lot of media tours to really attract attention and showcase the technology and how it can help a person in their everyday life.”
“With print or radio, you can’t really see the product in action. So with a video, we’re able to showcase it in a real life scenario where you’ve got a lot of things going on and the product can really help you in those things. So we really thought that was one of the important ways to portray the benefits of the product because seeing really is believing, especially with these types of products.”
“The response has been extremely positive. All the media that we’ve been showing it over the last couple of days have really liked it because it really portrays the product in a real life scenario. They get the chance to talk to all the product guys, like myself, and we talk about the techs and specs but this helps them translate those techs and specs into meaningful things.”
“We really believe in trying to showcase technology and humanize technology. A print campaign or a strictly in-store type campaign really can’t accomplish that. You really have to get face-to-face with people and show them how it benefits them. So, that’s why we’re doing the media tour, that’s why we’ve done these viral videos, so people can actually feel and see for themselves the product in action.”
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